This is the photograph of Leslie Stephen on which
an 1870 engraving by Edward Whymper was based. Stephen thought
that he appeared to some people “to be silent, cold and
sarcastic.” In his memoir, Stephen noted: “I am, like
my father, ‘skinless’: oversensitive and nervously
irritable. I am apt also to be a little absent in mind, absorbed
in thoughts about my books or my writings, and occasionally paying
very little attention to what is passing around me.” Stephen
was also supersensitive to criticism: “I am so touchy that
I have long ceased to read reviews of myself.”